America's Physician Shortage: Look to PAs, Not Abroad

The United States has long addressed physician shortages by recruiting international medical graduates (IMGs), often from low- and- middle income countries. This "brain drain" deprives already fragile health systems and adds to worldwide health disparities. New state legislation has eased licensing standards for IMGs and generated variable training pathways creating patient safety risk in underserved groups. At the same time, the U.S. has a sustainable, highly trained, and proven ready workforce: physician associates (PA). Created in the 1960s to address physician shortages, PAs undergo intensive graduate-degree education, uniform clinical education, and national certification on par with physicians. Nonetheless, obsolete laws governing supervision hinder their full exercise of practice. Updating PA practice statutes and aligning workforce funding to invest in PAs presents an ethical, and long-lasting remedy to the physician shortage. Doing so would neither deplete global talent nor rob world medical resources. Enabling PAs to practice to the full depth of their education will fortify U.S. healthcare with maintaining essential world medical resources intact.